So when business owners shift from tactical mindset to a strategic mindset, and then systematically validated all of the elements detailed below...that's when they stop guessing and started growing.

With that established...let's unpack these four concepts will determine whether you businesses thrives...or languishes.

// CLARITY

At the end of the day, if you’re not clear on how (and to whom) you deliver value to the world, so will your potential customers. And getting clear on the value prop starts with 3 core elements:

1. The problem you solve

2. How you solve it for

3. Why choose you (vs. anything else)

That clarity helps guide decisions and almost feels like it illuminates the path forward. It's at the core of everything.

// ALIGNMENT (aka Product Market Fit)

This is the biggest strategic leverage and it can change things (seemingly) overnight for a business.

The concept is very simple; *deliver what your market wants*. (Revolutionary I know:)

And although I don’t mean to sound harsh; if a business if having a problem selling what they have, then there’s likely an alignment problem with the market; otherwise they’d want what you have, right?

The way you get there is to, what we call, ‘develop customers’; which means using (in our case very specific frameworks) to extract problem, emotion, solution, deficiencies language from the market and then analyze for patterns.

You then map those elements to a) your product / service b) your marketing

And just how effective is that (fairly simple) exercise? We’ve had clients selling a (very) high ticket corporate training program before they were even done developing it.

// DIFFERENTATION

If you’ve done all those things, you’re likely still left with the fact that you are competing with thousands? Ten of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? (Wrote a recent article that there are almost 400,000 ‘coaches and trainers’ in the US)

So you need to have a *really* good answer to the question “Why should I do business with you vs. anyone else…or no one at all”

The first part of the question is answered by finding your unique value proposition.

This could be your methodology, technology, customer experience, etc.

So in our case (what ‘flipped the switch’ on our growth / clients' growth)…was developing a methodology that included three core (differentiating) elements:

2. Sequence (in what order we tackle client issues…one success building on another in a very intentional sequence)

3. System (we developed the term ‘micro-validation’, which is essentially a philosophy we use to test ALL hypothesis on all of the elements above (which eliminates spinning one’s wheels trying to ‘guess’ your way to success

// VALIDATION

Which brings me to the last element, which is validation.

When we started to getting real…then getting ruthless with ourselves (and then with clients) on *validating* every assumption we were making…it completely changed the game.

It’’s the most freeing feeling in the world *knowing* what your market truly wants; *knowing* what language they use; *knowing* what unique value proposition communicates best to them.

And on a personal note; I’ve found this part to be most fulfilling in that I’m no longer trying to convince people they need some fancy whiz bang thing ma bob.

I’m just giving them exactly what they need, in language that resonates with them in a way that not only makes logical sense, but helps me stand out in the marketplace.

And as I mentioned; we’ve seen the exact same things happen with clients (side note: who truly take action and implement) after we made these shifts in what we delivered to them.